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Lily’s pulse leaped. “Can you describe him? Please, Madame Bonnet.”
The old lady glared some more, muttered a few uncomplimentary phrases like “incompetent idiots” and “bumbling fools,” then barked, “I told you, he was handsome. Tall, slim, black-haired. Very well dressed. He arrived by taxi, and another came for him when he left. That is all.”
“Could you guess his age?”
“Young! To me, anyone under fifty is young! Don’t bother me with these silly questions.” And with that, she stepped back and closed the door with a bang.
Lily took a deep breath. A young, handsome, dark-haired man. And well-dressed. There were thousands who met that description in Paris, which abounded with handsome young men. It was a start, a piece of the puzzle, but as a stand-alone clue it meant absolutely nothing. She had no list of usual suspects, nor a selection of photographs she could show Mme. Bonnet and hope the old lady could pick out one and say, “This one. This is the man.”
And what did this tell her, really? This handsome young man could have hired them to blow up something at the Nervi lab, or he could have been no more than a friendly acquaintance who happened to visit. Averill and Tina could have gone somewhere else to meet the person who hired them, rather than letting him come to their home. In fact, that would have been more likely.
She rubbed her forehead. She hadn’t thought this out, but she didn’t know if it could be thought out. She didn’t know if it mattered why they’d taken the job, or what the job was. She couldn’t even be certain there was a job, but it was the only scenario that made sense and she had to go with her instinct on that. If she started doubting herself now, she might as well pack it in.
Deep in thought, she walked back to the train platform.
10
Georges Blanc believed strongly in law and order, but he was also a pragmatic man who accepted that sometimes there were difficult choices and one just did the best one could.
He didn’t like providing information to Rodrigo Nervi. He did, however, have a family to protect and an older son who was in his first year at Johns Hopkins University, in the United States. The tuition at Johns Hopkins was almost thirty thousand American dollars every year; that alone would have beggared him. But he would have managed, somehow, if Salvatore Nervi hadn’t approached him over ten years ago and genially suggested that Georges would greatly benefit from a second, very generous income, for which he would have to do nothing but share information now and then, and perhaps do some small favors. When Georges had politely refused, Salvatore had kept smiling, and had begun reciting a bone-chilling list of misfortunes that could befall his family, such as his house burning down, his children being kidnapped or perhaps even physically harmed. He told how a gang of thugs had broken into an old woman’s house and blinded her by throwing acid in her face, how savings could disappear like smoke, how automobiles had accidents.
Georges had understood. Salvatore had just outlined the things that would happen to him and his family if he refused to do what Salvatore demanded. So he had nodded, and tried over the years to limit the damage he did with the information he passed on and the favors he did. With those threats as motivation, Salvatore could have had the information for free, but he had established an account for Georges in Switzerland, and the equivalent of twice his yearly salary was paid into it every year.
Georges was careful to outwardly live on his Interpol salary, but pragmatic enough to dip into the Switzerland account to pay for his son’s education. There was a healthy amount in the account now, having accumulated for ten years and drawn interest as well. The money was there; he wouldn’t use it to buy luxuries for himself, but he would use it for his family. Eventually, he knew, he would have to do something with the money, but he didn’t know what.
Over the years he had dealt mostly with Rodrigo Nervi, Salvatore’s heir apparent, and now heir in fact. He would almost rather have dealt with Salvatore. Rodrigo was colder than Salvatore, smarter, and, Georges thought, probably more ruthless. The only advantage Salvatore had had over his son was experience, and more years in which to accumulate a devil’s list of sins.
Georges checked the time: one pm. With the six hours’ time difference between Paris and Washington, that made it seven AM there, just the right time for reaching someone on a cell phone.
He used his own cellular phone, not wanting a record of the call on Interpol’s records. Marvelous inventions, cell phones; they made pay phones almost obsolete. They weren’t as anonymous, of course, but his was secure against eavesdropping and far more convenient.
“Hello,” a man said after the second ring. In the background Georges could hear a television, the modulated tones of newscasters.
“I’ll be se
nding you a photograph,” Georges said. “Would you please run it through your facial-recognition program as soon as possible?” He never used a name, and neither did the other man. Whenever one of them needed information, he would call on a personal phone, rather than going through channels, which kept their official contact at a minimum.
“Sure thing.”
“Please send all pertinent information to me by the usual channel.”
They each rang off; conversations were always kept to a minimum as well. Georges knew nothing about his contact, not even his name. For all he knew, his counterpart in Washington cooperated for the same reason he himself did, out of fear. There was never any hint of friendliness between them. This was business, which they understood all too well.
“I need a definite answer. Will you have the vaccine ready by the next influenza season?” Rodrigo asked Dr. Giordano. There was a huge report on Rodrigo’s desk, but he was concerned with the bottom line, and that was whether the vaccine could be produced in the volume needed, before it was needed.
Dr. Giordano had a hefty grant from several world health organizations to develop a reliable vaccination against avian influenza. Theirs wasn’t the only laboratory working on this problem, but it was the only one that had Dr. Giordano. Vincenzo had become fascinated with viruses and had left his private practice behind for a chance to study them, becoming an acknowledged expert and seen as someone who was either a remarkable genius or remarkably lucky in working with the microscopic nasties.
A vaccine for any strain of avian flu was difficult to develop, because avian flu was fatal to birds and vaccines were made by growing the influenza virus in eggs. Avian flu, however, killed the eggs; therefore, no vaccine. The developer of a process for producing an effective, reliable vaccine against avian flu would have a huge cash cow.
This was, potentially, the biggest moneymaker in the entire Nervi corporate structure, more lucrative even than opiates. So far avian flu itself was following dead-end paths: The virus would pass from an infected bird to a human, but it lacked the means of human-to-human infection. The human host would either die or get well, but without infecting anyone else. Avian flu, as it was now, was still incapable of causing an epidemic, but the American CDC and the World Health Organization were greatly alarmed by certain changes in the virus. The experts were betting that the next influenza pandemic, the influenza virus against which humans had no immunity because they’d never come in contact with it before, would be an avian influenza virus—and they were holding their breaths with each successive flu season. So far, the world had been lucky.
If the virus made the necessary genetic changes that would enable it to jump from human to human, the company that could make a vaccine for that influenza would be able to name its price.
Dr. Giordano sighed. “If there are no more setbacks, the vaccine can be ready by the end of next summer. I cannot, however, guarantee there will be no more setbacks.”
The explosion in the lab last August had destroyed several years of work. Vincenzo had isolated a recombinant avian virus and painstakingly developed a means of producing a reliable vaccine. The explosion had not only destroyed the product, it had also taken out a huge amount of information. Computers, files, hard copy notes—gone. Vincenzo had started again from scratch.
The process was going faster this time, because Vincenzo knew more about what worked and what didn’t, but Rodrigo was concerned. This season’s influenza was of the ordinary variety, but what about next season? Producing a batch of vaccine took about six months, and a large quantity of it had to be ready by the end of next summer. If they missed that deadline and next season the avian virus made the genetic mutation it needed to jump from human to human, they would have missed the opportunity to make an incredible fortune. The infection would flash around the world, millions would die, but in that one season the immune systems of those who survived would adjust and that particular virus would reach the end of its brief success. The company that was ready with a vaccine when the virus mutated was the company that would reap the benefits.
